


The Truth About Connor Walsh

by shewho



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: ARFID, Anxiety, Connor Walsh centric, Connor|Michaela friendship, Eating Disorders, Gen, Mental Health Issues, potentially triggering content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:24:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewho/pseuds/shewho
Summary: The truth is, Connor Walsh doesn’t have a drug problem. He never had a drug problem.He has an eating disorder. He’s…kind of always had an eating disorder.





	1. Connor Walsh - August 2015

**Author's Note:**

> Heyo! Welcome to my initial stroll through the HTGAWM fandom, and lemme preface this fic by saying: HOLY CRAPOLI, tw for eating disorders, y'all. This is a lengthy look at Connor Walsh dealing with some complex issues re. food, but I trust you all to make your own decisions; you know what you gotta do to keep safe. That said, ENJOY!

The truth is, Connor Walsh doesn’t have a drug problem. He never _had_ a drug problem. He has an eating disorder. He’s…kind of always had an eating disorder.

He’s not really sure at what age he figured out that ‘disordered eating’ had swerved into ‘eating disorder’. It wasn’t ever a single, climactic moment. He just knew.

(That said, the whole “being forcibly confined in a residential treatment facility the year he turned sixteen” thing sort of threw the situation into sharp focus.)

Still, it wasn’t so bad in the beginning.

He knows, analytically, that the anxiety was the origin source of the eating…thing.

Even as a kid, at six, and seven, and eight, he remembers the way he would work himself up, and work himself up, let the anxiety settle thick and hard underneath his ribcage, making his stomach roil.

It always made him nauseous, made him feel so ill that sometimes he had to throw up, _he had to_ , otherwise the feeling settled into his bones, his muscles, and he could barely move. He hated that feeling, hated the blinding queasiness that would roll over him, almost as much as he loved the weight that floated off his shoulders when his stomach finally felt empty. But he’s always hated to throw up, hated the way it drained his energy and filled his head with a buzzing numbness.

At first, he didn’t eat at all. But that made him feel sluggish and stupid, and he couldn’t stand that. Junior high, and then those first eight months at boarding school were one long, drawn-out grey blur of dizziness, and spacing out during lecture, and hyperventilating in dark bathrooms, and staying awake for days at a time, trying to catch up. Even behind the detachment, he could tell that the pattern wasn’t a sustainable one.

So the ‘food thing’ evolved, and he didn’t, still doesn’t eat _much_. There are some foods that never sit well, that always end up in the garbage, or the toilet, or on the ground behind his apartment building. Connor wouldn’t call himself a vegetarian, but low-key vegetarianism goes a long way towards making sure his food stays down. He’s developed a complex sets of rules when it comes to the food he puts in his mouth, mostly drawn from experience regarding the food that he can’t make _stay_ in his mouth. Nothing greasy; nothing heavy; not too much of anything sharp, or crunchy; not more than one drink with carbonation in a six-hour period. That way the anxiety’s free to roll over him in waves, but the nausea fails to find purchase.

These days the anxiety, and the ADD, and the eating issues create a feedback loop, and he’s not entirely sure anymore which disorder fuels which behaviors.

As with anything, there are good days and not-so-good ones. Days when he’ll stare at his meticulously packed lunch for a half hour before trashing the whole thing. Days when he’ll cut class to run countless hours in Philadelphia’s parks. Days when he’ll lie to everybody about eating with someone else.

Days like today, when he can feel the anxiety piling up underneath his lungs, latching around his middle until he _can’t breathe_. Days where one minute he’s fine, going about his business, and the next he’s hanging onto a parked car for balance as he gags and chokes, and finally vomits into a storm drain.

He sucks in a stuttering breath that aches and pulls all the way down into his lungs, spits hard.

He should be upset. He should be _pissed_ that his body still remembers how to do this, but he can’t help the little thrill of pride that flares in the back of his mind as he sucks in another deep breath.

It’s been nearly three years since he did this regularly, two since he did this at _all_ , but Connor Walsh is still dangerously adept at purging without the use of his hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARFID refers to what's now known as "Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder", and was previously called SED or "Selective Eating Disorder".


	2. Connor Walsh - August 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You may have noticed that the chapter titles now have a month and year attached to them, because what HTGAWM fic would be complete without some flashbacks? To clarify, this fic is a canon compliment through the end of Season 2, but is NOT entirely compliant with the Season 3 canon. Viewers who have watched the third season may notice references to many things that really do happen in the show canon; however, this fic will diverge extensively from canon, so please do not tell me "this didn't happen that way on the show"! Much love, and ENJOY!

Prior to the night Wes killed Sam Keating in front of him, Connor divided his life into little snippets around nodes of importance. Starting junior high, losing his virginity, going off to boarding school, his first time in residential inpatient, graduation, his second stint in res, undergrad, a third go-round of treatment that finally seemed to stick, his acceptance at Middleton, graduation redux, moving to Philly, being selected as a member of Annalise Keating’s elite squad of interns.

Now, there is a sharp distinction between Before and After, a Rubicon that he cannot uncross.

Paradoxically, though, it’s not that singular climactic moment that sends him spiraling.

It follows – fairly logically – that the stupid murder-slash-cover-up streak would kick off his unhealthiest of coping mechanisms, but it doesn’t, not really. He throws up in Professor Keating’s sink that night and on the stoop of Oliver’s building the next morning, and each time that act settles all the thoughts churning in his brain, calming in its familiarity. Connor doesn’t count it as a slip-up because, really, who could blame him?

Vomiting in response to a corpse is a completely normal reaction.

Still, surprisingly, minus the murders and general mayhem that follows the disciples of Annalise Keating wherever they go, his first year of law school actually goes okay. Not great, not awesome, but very firmly _okay_. It’s that first summer which sends him crawling back for his long-standing habits.

Summer always goes like that, though, and he isn’t sure what makes this time different. Summer is always staying up too late, and eating one meal a day, and working out at obscene hours because he’s _bored_. Summer is going home for two weeks and hiking up near Tahquamenon Falls with his cousins; summer is spending the early afternoons on his roof listening to weird indie shit, or the weekly playlists of trashy pop music that Asher sends him faithfully.

Summer is always when he lets the rigidity of his meal plans slip, just a little, not too much. Years of this same bullshit have dug a rut into Connor’s brain, a boundary that lets him know when he has to stop giving himself slack, when he needs to rein it all in and pull himself back from whatever edge he’s chosen to toe this time. Suffice it to say Connor is well accustomed to troubleshooting his brain semi-regularly, lest the soul-scrubbing cycle of sloppy drinking and sloppier fucking begin again in earnest.

The thing is, it’s barely the first week of August.

He has to be back in classes in a _week_ , and he’s puking in the street, praying to avoid a possible public intoxication charge, and goddamn, this is _bad_.

Well.

Not quite _bad_ yet, not a dire emergency _yet_ , but this – this kind of behavior – sets his well-honed warning bells off anyways. This is not _okay_ and he knows it. Connor recognizes that this behavior isn’t healthy, that it’s very much something that his (many) therapists through the years would not approve of.

The last time he left inpatient, he’d been told, “If you feel the urges coming back, or if you start to see the same patterns again, there’s nothing wrong with coming back for more therapy. It’s healthy to use your coping strategies, but it you find yourself at a point where all you’re doing is coping – not moving past the issues at hand – don’t hesitate to seek treatment again.”

So maybe he was a little bit arrogant in his assumption that he’d worked so fucking hard to beat his food-demons into the dirt that, this time, they would just stay away.

Troubling conduct aside, he’s stronger than this. He’s better than this. He’s still fully functional, which is more than he could say for himself the last time he caught himself starting to slip. He’s fine. Well, maybe not fine. But he’s not gonna worry about it just yet. He’ll be okay.

 

*

 

He throws up in the courthouse bathroom on the third day of class before the rest of the K-5 even arrive, tie draped over one shoulder, five-foot-ten form folded up into the impossibly tiny space to minimize the chances of getting vomit spatter on his shoes.

Watching his breakfast swirl away down the drain – egg white and tomato on a sesame bagel, two cups of coffee from Oliver’s horribly wasteful single-serve Keurig before he even left the apartment – Connor feels the first real threads of concern spinning through the back of his mind. This is the second time he’s thrown up in six days, the third in eight days, and just acknowledging those ratios could be the beginning of a long string of dangerous thoughts that he needs to cut off right-the-fuck-now.

Being careful to avoid his own gaze in the mirror, Connor splashes some water on his face and scrubs at his mouth with a paper towel before bracing himself against the cool ceramic surface, struggling to breathe normally. He forces the heels of his hands into his eye sockets as hard as he can, trying to concentrate on the starburst colors, the droning sound of the air conditioner echoing through the bathroom and _not_ on the frantic hammering of his heart against his ribcage or the rasp in his chest as he sucks in air as best he can through clenched teeth, sounding like a drowning man pulled up from the depths of some brackish hellhole. The anxiety explodes into a frustrated rage for a second, and his hands clench into fists, nails scratching at his scalp as they curl in on themselves.

It hurts, enough that it lets him take a deep breath, enough that the rage ebbs, the anxiety settles back into his bones where it’s been living for so long that now it feels alarmingly normal.

Still disregarding his reflection, he retrieves his takeaway coffee cup from the edge of countertop, swishing it around his teeth a few times before spitting into the sink. The coffee is the cheap stuff sold just outside the courthouse and leaves a metallic taste in his mouth, but it’s grounding, something concrete to focus on. The dirty-pocket-change tang reminds him an awful lot of blood, though, and Connor shoves a stick of disconcertingly green gum into his mouth to counteract the iron-y taste with a layer of mint. Finally meeting his eyes in the glass, he snaps his gum, breathes deep, tightens the knot in his tie near the point of strangulation. _Suit up. Shut ‘em down._

Against all odds, the mirror survives his exit from the bathroom, and he gets back to his seat in the gallery without incident. Connor craves another Ativan, sips at his crappy cup of coffee and makes eyebrows at Millstone over the rim instead while wishing it was Red Bull (preferably with a vodka shot).

He’s gonna be fine. He’ll be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some more clarification on how the years work in the canon of this fandom, because it's a little confusing! Seasons 1 & 2 cover the period from August 2014 to May 2015. This fic begins after the end of Season 2 and, as stated above, replaces the canonical Season 3. [Those lucky bastards haven't lived to see the shit-show of 2017 (yet).]
> 
> Also, if you were wondering, Connor's preferred flavor of gum for the purposes of this fic is Wrigley 5 Gum's "Mystery Mint: Maze", which turns a violently neon acid green when you chew it.


	3. Connor Walsh - August 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry the updates have been really slow, guys! I’ve been rewriting and reformatting this whole fic for your enjoyment (and my own satisfaction). Additionally, I’ve been having some trouble staying in the necessary headspace to keep writing new content for this fic, as it touches on a lot of personal stumbling blocks, so I apologize again for the wait. Enjoy, lovelies!

Turns out everything is not ‘okay’.

Annalise drops Stanford on him with the precision of a drone strike, aiming to make it hurt. And it stings, it makes his chest _ache_ when he thinks about how overlooked and alone Oliver must’ve felt, that he thought the only option open to him was something so fucking drastic. The thought that he’d neglected his boyfriend to such a degree makes something deeply unpleasant well up underneath his ribcage.

That said, when he brings it up to the man in question, bathed in the familiar soft light of the kitchen, the conversation goes even more poorly than expected.

“So, what?” he hears himself say through the tight, heady panic collecting in his chest. “Are you saying – I mean, d’you wanna…take a break, or something?”

He watches the line of Oliver’s throat as he swallows, opens his mouth: “I think we should break up.”

Connor processes the words slowly, like he’s hearing them from underwater. “What?”

The pleading tone that threads through Oliver’s voice sends a spike of pain right into the center of Connor’s chest, “C’mon, Connor; please don’t make this harder than it already is.”

_“What?”_

He feels like he’s trapped in a bastardized Tarantino gif as the words bang in endless circles around the inside of his skull; _what what what what say what again say what again what I dare you I double dare you motherfucker say what one more goddamn time what._ His heart is beating so, _so_ fast as he tries to quell the tears welling up and wetting his eyelashes. Oliver’s about to dump him; Oliver _is_ dumping him. And for what?

“We need to take a break,” Oliver says, a wrinkle working its way between his brows. “This level of, of codependency isn’t good for us. I’m – we’re _both_ – different people from who we were when we met. I just think that maybe we need some time to reconcile that, to be who we are as individual people before we can be a couple.”

It’s such a juvenile, shitty excuse, reminds him of Katie Reimer telling her eighth-grade boyfriend, _‘I need to get closer to Jesus before I can get closer to you’_ , and he wants to feel that burning, righteous anger Oliver’s so indignant he won’t express, but all he feels is a spreading numbness overtaking him. “But _I love you_.”

He wants to slam his head against the wall almost as soon as the words leave his mouth; _fuck,_ he sounds so lame. Wants to see the dent in the plaster, run his hand over the inverse curve of his skull, maybe smear the spatter of blood left when the thin skin of his forehead splits.

Oliver doesn’t answer. Doesn’t matter that he’d said he loved Connor, too, less than a minute ago. This is a country with guarantees for freedom of thought, expression; people are allowed to change their goddamn minds. Oliver just wipes at his eyes with the cuff of his sweatshirt, careful not to disturb his contacts, and _dammit_ , he made Oliver cry. He can’t fucking believe he made Oliver cry, _again_.

He’s breathing goes a little shallow and the roaring sound in his ears tells him that he’s probably gonna be sick. “I’m gonna be sick, Ollie; please, I swear to god, don’t – ”

“This isn’t _healthy_ , Connor!” Oliver implores, his voice breaking over the words. “This isn’t okay!”

“I don’t care, please, come on, we’re _fine_ , don’t do this!”

“You can pretend that we’re fine, Connor, but we’re _not_. Okay?” Oliver practically seethes, frustration beginning to counterbalance his sadness. “We’re in a place that’s not good, for either of us. It’s toxic. We’re not being honest with ourselves or with each other, and I think we just both need different things right now.”

He doesn’t understand. He just fundamentally does not understand what’s led Oliver to the conclusion that this is the best course of action. He doesn’t need anything different; he _needs_ Oliver to hold him when he dreams of charred psychology professors, needs Oliver to indulge his foreign miniseries addiction, needs Oliver to help him understand what, exactly, is going on.

He wants to scream, _“I’ve fallen for you in a hundred different ways; I can make a comprehensive list.”_ He wants to grovel, to beg, _“Don’t make me leave!”_ He wants nothing more in this moment than to get falling-down drunk, or go running until he can’t feel his legs underneath him, or find some excuse to exchange handjobs with the creepy former-Navy dude from the fifth floor; something to get out of his head, just for a little while. He throws up a little in his mouth, makes himself swallow convulsively, _no, no, you cannot do this tonight._

That’s a dangerous thought – and not just one, but a whole string of them, the weft of a dangerous tapestry being strung throughout the corners of his brain – but it just kind of is what it is.

He doesn’t do any of that, though. Oliver’s mind seems made up, for the moment at least. Instead, he makes himself murmur a fragile, “ _Okay_ ,” his voice so small and thin he hardly recognizes it as his own.

“Okay?” Oliver repeats, like he didn’t think Connor would agree, and another jolt of panic hits him; _is this an incorrect response? Did Oliver want him to fight harder for their relationship?_ A sigh heaved from the bottom of Oliver’s chest echoes in the too-still air of the kitchen. “Okay,” he repeats, bringing a hand to his mouth to chew at the skin around his thumbnail. He finally reestablishes eye contact, delivers one last verbal sucker punch to Connor’s exposed throat: “D’you mind sleeping on the couch? ‘Til you can find an apartment of your own?”

His heart thunders against his rib cage, but he nods anyways. _It’ll be fine. It’ll be okay. He can make it work. He can fix this._ And it’ll keep Oliver happy.

Uneasy silence fills the apartment as he nabs his pillow from the – from _Oliver’s_ – bedroom, pulls down a couple of the softer company-blankets from the closet. Oliver flips CNN on low, mumbling, “You can take a shower if you need,” to which Connor just shakes his head, “‘ _M fine for tonight_.”

He closes the bathroom door for what he’s pretty sure is the first time ever as he brushes his teeth, holds a cold washcloth to his eyes trying to bring down the swelling. The situation’s mended for now, but he doesn’t feel the self-satisfied buzz he’s grown accustomed to spread under his skin. In its place, he just feels a stale, stifled relief. This is nothing. This is, as they say, only the closest snake.

Connor falls asleep with the taste of Oliver’s toothpaste on his tongue, a poor substitute for the usual kiss they used to use to say ‘good night’. Underneath the faux-mint he can still taste the slightest tang of bile, to which he remains too far attuned.

*

When he is sixteen, his doctors tell him that he has the atypical binge-purge subtype of anorexia.

When he is eighteen, a different set in a different state tell him that he has EDNOS with SED tendencies.

By the time he turns twenty-one, he’s diagnosed with ARFID. Reading the criterion feels unsettlingly autobiographical, but also packs Connor’s system full of relief. This is it, no question. This is the nameless _thing_ he’s been dealing with for more than two thirds of his life.

The whole food thing isn’t actually that complicated, if one were to break it down into its component parts. It’s deceptively simple. Almost infuriatingly so. The anxiety makes him throw up; he hates to throw up, so he doesn’t eat. Sometimes. Or only eats some things, sometimes.

Connor’s not stupid, is the thing. He knows he has to eat, knows that he could die or do himself irreversible damage if he doesn’t. He’s always known this. So he eats. He eats just enough to keep his hands from shaking and his mind steel-trap sharp. Even when the food burns like lit matches thrown carelessly down his throat, he eats.

Despite all appearances to the contrary, dying is pretty fucking low on Connor’s list of priorities.

*

He should’ve known.

He’s known these people for an entire year; he really should’ve seen the shit hurtling towards him before it hit the fan. Still, the feeling is the same as that last evening, same rushing in his ears, same tightness over his ribcage, the same sick sense of everything lurching beneath him as he fruitlessly tries to defend himself: “I didn’t cheat on him.”

None of the K-5 believe him – _of course they don’t, they think he’s a slut_ – but that doesn’t make it not true. In response to their collective doubt, Connor cloaks himself in familiar layers of arrogance and apathy, pretending to be resilient, and confident, and strong. He’s not any of those things. He hasn’t been any of those things for a while now.

But Connor’s good at faking it ‘til he makes it, and this ought to be no different. Also, it will possibly keep his newly-former boyfriend from noticing that he’s damaged goods, and the true extent of that damage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coincides with S3E1 and S3E2


	4. Connor Walsh - August 2015

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it mention of canon underage sex, just heads up. Also mentions of misuse of prescribed medications at the end, but - again - it's a one and done mention.

It’s so fucking domestic, Oliver standing there in the kitchen, cooking like this isn’t the same spot he dumped Connor in less than a week ago.

He can’t fucking stand it.

The kiss feels like a Band-Aid, a stop-gap, and yet he still thinks, maybe, for a moment, it’ll make things okay again.

“Whatever you want,” he says, making sure to look up through his eyelashes when he says it, even as his voice goes rough with the threat of unshed tears. “I’ll do it.”

And he would. He _will_. He’ll do anything right now to rid himself of the feeling wrapping around his bones, under his skin, the anxiety that makes his hands go numb.

Only Oliver beats him to the punch, slumping down on the couch with his head in his hands. He barely register’s the other man’s words, except for “let me go”.

“I’ll pack,” he hears himself say, watches Oliver’s lips form what he thinks might be the curve of his name, but he can’t be sure over the insistent pulse pounding loudly between his ears. Connor sort of watches himself leave the room, head towards the bedroom he used to hold a claim on. He makes it to the bathroom before the frantic shaking and blinding nausea take over, about forty seconds before his lunch is revisited. The smell makes his head whirl, and he vomits again

When he’s got it all out, and he’s not sure if he’s crying from the vomiting or from the feelings he caught when nobody was looking, he braces himself against the rim of the bowl and thinks, in something that resembles the barest edge of a prayer, _oh shit, oh shit, oh shit_.

 

*

 

The sexual exploits of Connor Walsh are varied and plentiful, to the point where many have become a blur of unnamed hands and skin and mouths. The ones that stand out stand out starkly from the rest.

First, there was Jesse “Jesse James” Davis, his camp counselor when he was fourteen. He remembers the long trek in the dark to the East Camp showerhouses, wet tile cutting his knees, learning how to clench a fist to distract himself out of a gag reflex, “ _I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks now._ ” Changing under the cover of his sleeping bag to avoid anybody seeing the hickies and fingertip bruises dotted across his skin, the lifeguards chuckling when he wouldn’t take off his t-shirt at the lake. Jesse squeezing his shoulder on the last day of camp, grinning at Connor’s mother, “ _You’ve got a bright boy here, Ms. Walsh_.”

He remembers the next summer, and the summer after that, fucking in the shadows of the climbing tower, on a tie-dye stained picnic table behind the Crafts Den, grinding his kneecaps on the bleached concrete of the pool house, “ _Open your mouth. Wider_.”

There was Matty Harris, his physics tutor at Briargate. He remembers the way Matt always smelled like chlorine from diving practice, how he would check the scribblings in Connor’s workbook over the younger boy’s shoulder, lips grazing the back of his neck with the barest touch, hands grasping at his upper arms and elbows. One-on-one study sessions in Matt’s corner single, navy cotton jersey sheets, “ _You’re taking three fingers so well, Connor. If you can tell me the equation for energy conservation, I’ll let you try for four.”_

Too many Briargate students to fucking even _begin_ to count.

Lacrosse captain Micah Dennison, future Wall Street drone Gil Keane. Typically repressed preacher’s kid Jack Coulson. Sophomore class treasurer Kyle Fong, who loved when Connor bit a collar of blueish bruises around his throat.

He worked his way through the men’s soccer team every year, happy to go back for more.

Blowing IT services work-study guru Sam Morales as a ‘thank you’ for solving his wireless connectivity problems with some degree of permanence.

Rushed handjobs in dark bathrooms with a solid two-thirds of the boys in his dorm, biting at each other’s mouths, trying to keep quiet and not alert the house master.

Then the house master, on the contingency that he’d stop busting up Connor’s bathroom forays.

Landon Brady, the varsity hockey team’s starting goaltender and one of the biggest exhibitionists Connor’s ever met, fucking in the observation suite above the hockey rink, making Landon clean his own cum off the glass, sometimes with his tongue.

His long-time roommate, Aiden Walker.

Will Ross, a medical student who worked the adolescent residential ward at the teaching hospital in Michigan. Will, who expressed his desire to ‘eat Connor loose’ and delivered on the promise tenfold, who loved to see Connor wear his borrowed scrub pants sans underwear, who managed to rotate Connor’s roommates out much more frequently than anybody else’s on the floor. _“Oh my, my, Mr. Walsh._ _Perfect way to end my shift. Thank you, sweetheart.”_  Will, who’s still his mutual on Instagram, who just got a posting in internal medicine at some hospital in Illinois.

A dozen random hookups, and then a dozen more, and then another until he lost count entirely.

He learns to pitch his voice up when it’s “ _God, I’m so tight”_ and down when it’s “ _God, you’re so tight_ ”.

A handful of his professors during undergrad.

Dr. Edward Moore, “ _Face down, ass up. That’s how I want you.”_

Dr. Jerald Kimball, “ _Christ, kid. Every time I hit you, you tighten down on me. Keep counting; if you fuck this up, I’d be more than happy to start over. You bruise so prettily.”_

Dr. Michael Unger, “ _You’ve been teaching here for, what, eight years? And in that time, how many students have come to you begging for special treatment, only to have you go to your knees where they thought they would be? Hmm? How many, sir?”_

Dr. J.M. Locke, “ _Uh-uh, swallow. No, c’mon. All of it.”_

Dr. Andrew Meuse, _“Oh, you look so frustrated, Andy. Well, I’m not stopping. You’re going to take all of me, I don’t care if it’s ‘too damn much’. The absurd amount of reading you assign is too damn much, to be fucking frank.”_

Dr. Erik Forskerskoler. “ _On your knees, slut. Stay where I put you.”_

Paxton Atchison, who killed himself in front of Connor in arguably one of the most traumatizing episodes of Connor’s entire fucking _life._

Oliver Hampton. Oliver, whom he loves.

 

*

 

She opens the door and his immediate thought is not one of relief; rather, it’s something along the lines of “ _I have made a grievous error”._

“Dammit, Connor, _please_ ; tell me what’s wrong.”

The collar of his shirt is tugged out of line, his lower lip bitten bloodless white. He stares at Michaela with wide, dark eyes and doesn’t say a thing.

 

*

 

“Here,” Laurel says the next morning, handing him an iced coffee with caramel drizzled around the inside of the cup and some kind of whipped topping from the cardboard carrying tray balanced carefully in the crook of her arm. “Lattes for everybody.”

It’s the kind of drink that can give you cavities if you just look at it too long, and Connor knows in his bones that he’ll throw it up, probably sooner rather than later. When the question becomes a decision between potentially ruining a pair of suit pants or vomiting for the third time this week, it kind of ceases to be a question.

“Connor,” Michaela chides, “The coffee’s supposed to go in your mouth, not in your lap.”

Sopping paper towels in hand, he sneers at her, his best enemy-mine lip twist, “Thank you, Captain Obvious.”

She’s ready for him though, and fires back a well-practiced, “You’re welcome, Sargent Sarcasm.”

Yeah, showing up at work cranked up on caffeine and Adderall, or cranked _way_ down on a double (triple; bordering on ‘over’) dose of his Ativan isn’t ideal but it’s leagues better than showing up a complete wreck, or worse, not showing up at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, all! This correlates with S3E2; next up, we'll finally be moving out of August! Yay!


End file.
